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Donald Trump insists that massive voter fraud prevented him from winning the popular vote, and CNN's Jeff Zeleny insists there is zero evidence of this. That disagreement played out on the president-elect's Twitter feed Monday night, as Trump retweeted supporters' condemnation of Zeleny, and both he and Zeleny weighed in. As Mediaite reports, it began when Zeleny criticized Trump's allegations of voter fraud as "blatant and baseless" while on the air, and Trump backers scoffed. One typical example: "Pathetic—you have no sufficient evidence that Donald Trump did not suffer from voter fraud, shame!" That was one of the slams retweeted by Trump, who added "Bad reporter" to the end, and Politico notes that the author is 16 years old.

Soon, Trump himself took aim. "CNN is so embarrassed by their total (100%) support of Hillary Clinton, and yet her loss in a landslide, that they don't know what to do," he tweeted. Amid all this, Zeleny took notice, especially after Trump retweeted another user who referred to Zeleny as a "part time wannabe" reporter. "Good evening!" he replied. "Have been looking for examples of voter fraud. Please send our way. Full-time journalist here still working." (Meanwhile, the Green Party's Jill Stein is pushing ahead with plans for recounts in three states.)

Donald Trump came under heavy criticism Tuesday after calling for the criminalization of burning the American flag, with critics gasping that the president-elect’s words represent a threat to the First Amendment. However, Trump’s suggestions are similar to a bill pushed in the Senate in 2005 that would criminalize flag burning – a bill that was co-sponsored by then-Sen. Hillary Clinton… In 2005, Clinton co-sponsored the Flag Protection Act which, while it did not call for the stripping of citizenship, made flag burning with the intent to incite violence or disturb the peace punishable by a year in jail and a $100,000 fine. The bipartisan bill, introduced by Clinton and then-Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, never made it out of the Judiciary Committee, but was floated as a compromise to a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban flag burning. Clinton was criticized for her stance then, although the criticisms leveled at her targeted Clinton’s perceived political slipperiness, rather than her representing a threat to constitutional liberty. A New York Times piece accused the senator of being “in pander mode.”

leamonrollo

Nov 30, 2016 8:16 AM CST

Looking back, here are the top 10 blunders of the Obama administration that helped to steer the midterms to the GOP: 10) The ObamaCare roll-out disaster: For such a tech-savvy White House, the bungling of the healthcare reform website was shocking, and a sign of things to come for a controversial law that never recovered from its initial missteps. 9) Syria’s “red line”: The president lost all credibility when he said that he would punish Syrian strongman Bashar Assad for using chemical weapons. When it was proven that Assad did deploy them against his own people, Obama refused to act without congressional authorization — authorization that never came. 8) Obama’s pen and phone: At the beginning of the year, the president suggested he was going to go around Congress, simultaneously raising expectations about his actions and lowering hopes for any progress on the legislative front. 7) The Ukrainian crisis: Not unlike former President Carter’s ineffectual response to the Soviet invasion of the Afghanistan in 1979, Obama looked weak when Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea and threatened to seize the rest of the Ukraine, piece by piece. 6) Obama’s broken promises on immigration reform: The president promised several times over the past year that he would take executive action on immigration, only to pull the football away at the last moment. His inaction demoralized Hispanic voters while stoking conspiracy theories on the right about what he was going to do after the election. The border surge only made the situation worse. 5) ISIS and ‘Golf-gate’: Directly after making a comment about the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS) execution of journalist James Foley, the president headed to the golf course. For that, he was justly criticized for being disengaged and unserious. His comment that he didn’t have a strategy to deal with the nascent terrorist group further cemented his reputation as a bumbler who didn’t know what he was doing. 4) Holder to Ferguson: The president implicitly picked sides by allowing his attorney general, Eric Holder, to define his position on the controversial shooting this summer in a St. Louis suburb. Either you are on the side of law and order or you aren’t, and Obama’s approval ratings have fallen precipitously since that moment. 3) Ebola: While the president is not to blame for the Ebola outbreak, his comments on the spread of the virus have proven to be inaccurate and led to the perception that he didn’t have a plan. He long resisted calls to appoint a point person to lead the effort, only to later buckle and appoint a political strategist to the position of Ebola czar. He refused to issue a travel ban from countries that had Ebola outbreaks, giving Republicans a huge political talking point. 2) Policies on the ballot: Obama told students at Northwestern University, “Make no mistake. These policies are on the ballot. Every single one of them.” For the Democratic senators who voted with Obama and his policies 97 percent of the time, those comments were most unhelpful at a time when they least needed the reminder. 1) Telling the wrong story: The American people care about the economy. The president doesn’t have a bad story to tell when it comes to jobs, the unemployment rate, the deficit, etc. If he were Ronald Reagan, it would be the Morning in America campaign. But the strategy of the Democrats wasn’t to talk about the economy. Instead they wanted to talk about contraception, the war on women and other narrow issues. At the end, they turned to race baiting to get blacks to the polls Enough said!

paul castle

Nov 30, 2016 3:34 AM CST

He's just a stupid uneducated man and there is little else to be said after the agony of the last few months.